If Your Father is the King, What Does That Make You?
One of the most familiar prayers of the High Holiday season is Avinu Malkeinu — “Our Father, our King.” The words are so familiar that we can easily say them without stopping to consider what they actually mean. Avinu — our Father. Malkeinu — our King. We speak of God in two very different ways. God is close to us, like a parent. But God is also sovereign, and commanding, like a King. And if God is our Father and our King, then what does that make you? About 20 years ago, I read a story that challenged me to think about that question in ways I had never considered before. It was about a woman named Sarah Jane Culberson , who discovered the answer to that question in a way that few people ever will. Sarah had been adopted as a baby and raised in West Virginia. She knew very little about her biological parents. For years she wondered where she had come from and who they had been. Finally, when she was twenty-eight years old, she decided to search for her biological fathe...